Chapter Five – Angela
Chapter Five
Angela
“We’re going to the Fleur de Lis?” I whispered as Mark drove us up to valet. It was Vegas’s newest hotel, the swankiest one yet, built just a year ago. He’d told me to dress up tonight, but what I had on wasn’t going to cut it –
“The one and only.” Mark hopped out of the car and tossed the valet his keys, then held my door open.
“What about—" I said looking back, expecting him to do the usual and tell the valet his name and phone number—to at least get the chance to ignore the ‘we are not responsible for your belongings!’ on the back of the card.
“No time, come on,” Mark said, tucking his arm under mine, propelling me forward.
When you live in Vegas your whole life, you get jaded, quickly—you get the kind of eyes that see the dust in corners and cobwebs too high to reach.
You knew there was a man behind the curtain—hell if you worked for the casino, you were the man behind the curtain—and it helped you blink the diamond dust right out of your eyes.
But all that said—the Fleur de Lis was legit.
Seemed legit. I was…going to have to do some rigorous exploration, once I figured out where the hell Mark was taking me.
Please let it be a bar, please let it be a bar—I didn’t think I could break up with him if there was a whole restaurant with fancy waiters watching.
“Have you been here before?” Mark asked, after watching my neck turn again. Who knew there could be so many chandeliers and that they could all sparkle so brilliantly?
“No. It’s beautiful.” Everything was rococo—or St. Petersberg, circa Catherine.
It would feel overwhelming if the space wasn’t so huge—instead all the ornamentation invited you to look up.
It was the kind of art that would make a small person feel smaller—but a grand person, moreso.
And sure enough, I felt tiny under the weight of so many frescos and angels and sculptures gazing out, whereas it finally seemed like Mark was at home, the lion in his ornate den.
He caught my chin and brought it back toward him. “Not as beautiful as you,” he said, kissed me gently, then pulled me gently toward the casino floor.
I trotted alongside him, two of my steps for each of his normal ones, catching gambler’s glances as we passed by.
Some stared at Mark, some stared at me, and others were too entranced by the dealers, women wearing low cleavaged Marie Antoinette-style ball gowns, situated behind each table—or looking for the cocktail waitresses, who were also wearing ball-gowns, but much narrower, with ruffled cut outs in the front, all the better to show off shapely legs, ending in appropriately ornate heels.
Mark chuckled as I slowed him down again. “I’ll give you the grand tour later—it’s just that I’m late—"
“For what?”
“There you are! Marky!” Another huge man loomed out as we went up three stairs to a cordoned off zone.
I could not imagine my Mark as a Marky. Not now, not ever. But the newcomer clapped his arm across Mark’s back with a solid thud and then looked at me. “And who is she?”
“Dante, this is Angela. Angela, Dante.”
Dante was every bit as big as Mark I realized, as he stepped back to give me a once over—not even trying to hide that he was, as he spun around me.
“It’s the eyes or the hands,” he explained. “I figured I’d use the eyes, since Mark was here and all.” Then he looked to Mark. “Nicely done, brother. Not that you ever pull badly.”
Mark cleared his throat loudly and Dante made a somewhat apologetic face, then caught my arm. “I’m afraid we’re running behind—so if it’s OK with you, Angela, I’d like him to seat you back with all the other good luck charms tonight.”
I looked to Mark and he nodded. “Sure,” I answered, completely unsure what the hell was happening, but letting Dante take me away.
We went down what I was fairly sure was a service corridor, although the paint and brocade didn’t end—perhaps all the better to remind employees just who they were dealing with and how they ought to act at all times—until we reached a quiet room with about fifty seats in the form of assorted velvet lounging couches and a large viewing screen.
Dante let my arm go with a flourish and then left, abandoning me with fifteen strangers.
Looking around—I felt like I’d walked into the pages of a fashion magazine. There were women here wearing shoes that cost more than my rent. If I started to calculate how much their jewelry was worth—I stopped, because it’d explode my mind.
I tottered over to the nearest empty couch, feeling awkward like a newborn foal, and sat down. A woman came up to me. “Cocktail?”
“Yes please. Vodka tonic.”
She circulated quickly and returned. I took the drink and fumbled in my clutch to pay her, but she shook her head. “Oh no,” she said, with a French accent. “Your money’s no good here.”
Just as I was about to ask why that was, the screen turned on.
The Fleur de Lis’s logo appeared—a camera shot focusing in on one diamond until it exploded under the pressure into the tri-fold namesake of the hotel—and then it cut to a room with seven men and three women, all holding cards.
Mark was among their number, sitting behind a high stack of chips.
“What the….”
A beautiful woman sat down beside me. She had light brown skin and her dress was a shimmering gold with cap-sleeves.
It sank between her breasts almost as high as it cut up her thigh, and her hair was a forest of ebony pincurls.
She was outrageously beautiful and secret parts of me wanted to purr.
“First time here?” She spoke with a real French accent—which made it all the easier now to identify how fake the cocktail waitress’s was.
“Yeah,” I said, timidly.
“Ahh.” Her lips pulled back in an expansive smile. “Welcome to being a bird in a cage then.”
“I’m sorry?”
“This room is soundproof, and what do you call it—" she waved a bored hand. “Electricity proof? The cage—invented by Faraday.”
I blinked. “Why?”
“When the stakes are this high, there can be no cheating. We’re allowed to see, but not communicate with our loved ones outside.” On the screen, the dealer started dealing, and the woman leaned closer to me, clinking my glass to hers. “Drink up.”
The other ‘good luck charms’ and I watched the first hand. I knew they were playing poker—once upon a time I’d dealt it—but what I didn’t know was how much each of the chips they were throwing around were.
I had a feeling I didn’t want to know, as I watched the first round and saw Mark turn five of them in, as a dapperly dressed gentleman closer to the screen clapped.
“Which one is yours?” the woman beside me asked.
As if to help me, the camera suddenly panned in, showing off the way Mark’s brow crinkled in thought at seeing his new cards. So many tells, I could see them from here—didn’t he know better? What did it matter though—it was his money. And I was breaking up with him besides.
“Him.”
“Ooooh, he’s a pretty one. What a jaw,” the woman beside me said.
I twisted to scan the room with all of its delicate decorations on the walls, the marble slab table which held caviar and seventy-year old Glenlivet, the pretty people bending and whispering to one another, with sudden bursts of applause as each round ended.
This was the kind of place that Gray wanted to burn to the ground.
It didn’t matter how big Mark was—he couldn’t save me.
And when I finished turning in my seat I saw her there, still staring at me. “And—and you?” I said, and took a sip of my drink, hoping vodka would help everything.
“That man in the corner,” she said, pointing with an outstretched hand. He had to be over three times her age, maybe four, and I couldn’t have pointed to the bottom of his chin or the beginning of his neck. “The one who looks a little bit like a wrinkled sock.”
I inhaled enough vodka to burn as I sputtered, “Excuse me?”
The woman laughed. “I’m allowed to say it. Tonight’s a night for honesty.”
“Yeah. It is,” I agreed, and took a much larger sip of my drink, this time making sure not to laugh.
She smiled again. “So how much have you bet on your man? I know it’s gauche to talk about, but I’m bored.” I gave her a blank look as she went on. “Unless you bet on another one of them?”
My jaw dropped a little. Had the doors of this hotel taken me to an alternate reality? I hadn’t had that much to drink—unless someone had spiked me.
“Don’t be shy,” she encouraged, “I bet against my man all the time.”
“I—I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, you are so new,” she said, and I got that distinct feeling like I was in high school all over again.
“They bet on the game and we bet on them, so on and so forth. This is being televised all over, for those who follow such things. Keeps life random. Makes things fun.” She rocked back into the couch.
“There’s no point in living without gambling. ”
The crowd applauded another round, and the camera scanned past Mark. His stacks of chips were greatly decreased, and if I understood her properly…. “That is some Hunger Games level bullshit, right there.”
She tilted her head sharply. “Hunger…Games? But no one here is hungry.”
She was definitely having fun at my expense. Had to be. “I’m sorry, I—" I said, and began to stand.
“Don’t go,” she pleaded, her expression was genuine.
Since this was likely the last time I’d ever be in this room, I asked: “Nothing personal, but why the hell are you hanging out with me?”